


A Black Ring

by solrosan



Series: Asexuality [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality, Black Ring, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock wears a black ring on his right, middle finger. John is the first to ask why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Black Ring

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't know a black ring was a symbol of anything before I stumbled upon a prompt about it, but I quite like the idea.

Sherlock leaned back in the chair and stretched a bit as the centrifuge accelerated and settled on the familiar buzzing sound when it reached its maximum speed. There was nothing to do but wait now – he had been too efficient along the way – and therefore he spun the chair around to once again acknowledge John’s presence at the other side of the laboratory bench. 

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” John flipped through a medical journal he’d swiped from the doctors’ lounge and seemed not at all interested in the test Sherlock was conducting, “A dash of milk, no sugar.”

“I know how you take your coffee, John,” Sherlock told him, a bit taken off guard.

“I know you do,” John looked up from the journal with a smirk, “Now run along and get me some.”

Sherlock was stumped, that wasn’t the answer he had expected. How did this happen? John must have seen his confusion because he chuckled and closed the journal.

“How long ‘til it’s done?” he asked, pointing at the centrifuge with his eyes.

“20 minutes, well, perhaps 18 now,” Sherlock checked the time on his phone.

“Not much time to head down to the cafeteria, then” John established, “Let’s go.”

Sherlock shook his head and followed; John was full of surprises. He wondered if all people were if he’d just gave them a chance? Tss. Hardly.

“So tell me about the ring,” John half-demanded, half-asked as they were walking back to the laboratory with their horrible hospital-cafeteria-coffee served in equally horrible paper cups.

Sherlock gave John a surprised look; yes, John was full of surprises indeed. 

Without really thinking about it he let his thumb caress the black ring he wore on his right middle finger. He had worn a black ring for close to seven years but until now, no one had ever commented on it. Maybe it would have been different, had he ever had a friend before, maybe not.

“Come _on_ Sherlock,” John stressed with a smile, “I can’t identify an airline pilot by his thumb, nor can I read your brother’s umbrella fetish from your suit pocket-” 

Sherlock raised his eyebrows; Mycroft didn’t have an umbrella fetish and if he had, it would not be readable on his pocket.

“-but I can tell that ring means something to you. It’s the only jewellery you wear, it’s in the same condition as Harry’s old phone, so I guess you never take it off and whenever you don’t feel 100 % in control you start to twist it. Like when I suggested you’d bring me coffee.”

“Did I?” Sherlock hadn’t even noticed. “Do I?”

“You did and you do.”

Sherlock looked down at his hand and let John open the door to the laboratory. In the beginning it had felt so strange wearing a ring, but now he wouldn’t recognise his hand without it. This was his second black ring, the first one – a very thin one, made out of hematite – broke at one point during a chase and he hadn’t even noticed. The one he was wearing now was a plane zirconium ring and, true to John’s observation, it had become a bit worn over the years.

Still, he loved it.

“Did I get anything wrong?” John wondered, obviously a bit amused by Sherlock’s mute, obviously distracted, reactions.

“No,” Sherlock shook his head, “I usually don’t wear jewellery, I never take it off and if you say I twisted it earlier, I trust you.”

“I think that earns me an answer to my question,” John smirked and seated himself in the same chair he had occupied before. 

“It wasn’t a question, it was a demand,” Sherlock pointed out just as the centrifuge beeped, announcing it was all done with spinning for a while.

John sighed, “Why do you wear that ring?” 

Yes, why on earth did he? 

Sherlock looked at the ring again and realised that he wondered the same thing. He’d always thought belonging didn’t matter; never wore anything with his uni logo on, never bought a hat with a team mascot (not that he had a team to support, but if he had, he wouldn’t), he didn’t even have a sense of national pride – he was just lucky to be born here and luck wasn’t something to take pride in.

He could be whoever he wanted without needing to show the world.

Still…this ring….

He popped the lid to the centrifuge to stall for time and removed the small tubes. John’s question fell into shadows for a moment as he held the sample to the light, frowning; what had he expected to see really? He still needed to ad trypan blue and place it on the hemocytometer grid before he could even try to count the cells. 

John had apparently accepted that the Q&A was put on hold because his presence wasn’t noted again until Sherlock had done his third dilution attempt (settling on a dilution factor of 1:10) and placed the serum on the grid. 

“How can you not find this dull?” John asked as Sherlock was about to start counting the cells with a microscope.

“Because it’s not,” Sherlock answered and worked the settings on the microscope, “As a medical professional you should at least have some interest in this.”

“I have an interest in the result,” John admitted, “Well, not in this…. I don’t really care how many fibroblasts you’ll plant on your cross-linked collagen. But the process is just too tedious.”

“You doctors just take the samples and send them off to the lab.” Sherlock looked up just to roll his eyes at John. “How do you think you get your results?” 

“Elves?” 

Sherlock snorted and hunched over the microscope again to start the counting. It really was a tedious job, he had to admit that, but he needed to know the cell concentration to be able to get to the non-tedious things later. After counting the two upper corners of the grid Sherlock leaned back, rubbing his eyes. If this didn’t give you a tension headache, nothing would. 

“Want me to count one for you?” John offered.

“Would you?” Sherlock said gratefully and pushed away from the table.

“For a fresh cup of coffee and an answer to my question, I will,” John said, already seating himself in front of the microscope, adjusting the lens. “Top, right line is it?”

“Doesn’t matter, not like I’m counting any of the adjoining boxes,” Sherlock informed him with played disinterest, turning the ring around his finger, “Milk, no sugar?”

“I thought you knew that,” John smirked.

“I do,” Sherlock said and left the room to get them more coffee. He played with his ring the entire way to the cafeteria. When thinking about it, he realised that he probably did it a lot even if he never noticed. He knew he’d done it constantly when he just had started to wear a ring so it was probably natural that he had continued doing so.

“You took your time,” John said without looking up from the microscope when Sherlock came back.

“There was a queue,” Sherlock placed the mug next to John who looked up some minutes later.

“Centre and bottom left counted,” John said after writing down a number next to three previous ones. 

“Thank you,” Sherlock waited to sit down at the microscope again to count the last square, but John didn’t move. He just picked up the coffee and looked at Sherlock, turning his chair slightly back and forth. 

“Not planning to move anytime soon,” John informed him with a smirk, taking a sip of coffee. Sherlock looked down at his right hand, twisting the ring. It was just so silly. So very silly. 

“I wear it as a reminder,” Sherlock finally said, sighing as he did so.

“Dare I ask as a reminder of what?” John wondered, this time without the smirk and Sherlock had the sensation that his friend would back off if he said no. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable answering.

“That it’s all fine, as you put it, and that I’m not alone,” Sherlock said, forcing himself to look at John and not fixating on the ring.

“You do know your answers raise more questions than they satisfy, right?”

“Probably,” Sherlock smiled and rolled John’s chair (and subsequently John) away from the microscope, placing himself there instead.

“So that’s it, then?”

“For now. Otherwise we’re never getting home and I promised Molly to be out before six so she could lock up.”

“Okay,” John nodded and opened the journal again “And Sherlock, it is all fine and I promise you’re not alone.”

A smile tried to break out on Sherlock’s lips as he rearranged the microscope to fit his eyes again but he made sure John couldn’t see it. John had no idea what he was really talking about, still Sherlock trusted him. It was an odd feeling.

“Late lunch?” Sherlock suggested as he closed the door to the incubator some time later, “Can’t do anything for two hours anyway and then it’s just adding new medium and then wait another two days.”

“Again, how can’t you find this boring?” John asked and shook his head, but he grabbed his jacket and they left for lunch, or dinner. They went for Italian; it was the closest restaurant outside Barts they could agree upon. 

“What does it symbolise?” John asked as they handed the menus back to the waitress, “The ring I mean.”

“I suspected you wouldn’t let it go,” Sherlock let his thumb caress the ring again. How come they always ended up in conversations like these when they had Italian food? Probably just a coincidence. No, most likely just a coincidence.

“Not until you ask me to,” John said and for a split second Sherlock actually thought about doing just that, but he looked out the window and tried to find the right words instead.

“It’s a symbol of asexuality,” Sherlock said when he’d decided on how to approach the subject and looked back at John. That statement didn’t seem to knock John off his chair; there was a hint of interest in his eyes though. Sure, with a homosexual sister (or was she bi? Sherlock didn’t actually know. How very presumptuous of him to just assume she was a lesbian) John might actually have a slightly better understanding about norm breaking sexualities than the man in the street, but he was still just a white, heterosexual man.

“I didn’t know there was one,” John said, confirming Sherlock’s theory that John wasn’t completely clueless. Most people – Sherlock himself included – reacted with ‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as asexuality’ when first encountering it.

“Very few people do,” Sherlock admitted, “I don’t even think the majority of people identifying as asexual does.”

“So the point being…?”

“As I said, it’s a reminder that it’s fine,” Sherlock didn’t even feel irritated that he had to repeat himself, “It’s not a declaration to the world, I don’t care about the world, and it’s actually subtle enough for people not to notice it. It’s not a statement, because I’m no more proud of being asexual as I guess you are of being straight. No more ashamed either.”

“Yeah, except my current lack of it, sex has always been a very non-issue in my life,” John said, looking a tad embarrassed. 

“It hasn’t always in mine,” Sherlock said, looking down at the ring and turning it twice before he looked up again, “I mean, now it’s a non-issue, but growing up in a society that forces sex on people the way ours do…. It was hard.”

“I can imagine,” John said, nodding. Sherlock was tempted to tell him that he couldn’t even start to comprehend what it was like. John didn’t seem to pity him though, or make it into anything more or less than it was, so it would be stupid to offend – or be offended by – the standard phrase.

“Curiosity satisfied?” Sherlock wondered just as their food arrived.

“For now,” John nodded and sniffed his food, “This smells delicious! Was afraid I wouldn’t get the agar smell out of my nostrils for weeks.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock shook his head, “It just stays there for a couple of hours.”

John gave him a look to tell him he was an idiot. Sherlock smirked. There was so much more he could tell John, but this wasn’t the time or the place. An Italian restaurant wasn’t the proper location to tell someone how his struggle to fit into a sexual society had made him turn to drugs and that the ring was a sobriety ring just as much as it was a symbol of his sexuality. Right now he couldn’t tell John that to him, this ring actually symbolised life and content…and even happiness. 

Instead he told the story about the first time Sally Donovan had called him a freak and John laughed.

It was strange how many emotions could be tied to an inanimate object. From now on, every time Sherlock looked at his ring, he wouldn’t just be reminded that it was fine to not fit the norm or that he was still alive and could be content with himself. From this moment on, he would also be reminded of the fact that John had cared enough to ask and then had accepted without questioning; because it was all fine and he wasn’t alone.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you that are interested: the result of the experiment was no fibroblasts were able to grow on the collagen. It was a disappointment (because it should have worked), but he went back and re-did it (without John, who couldn't stand sitting through that again) and got viable cells to grow on the third attempt.


End file.
